Vite

What is Vite?

Vite is a front-end build tool that consists of two major parts:

• A dev server that serves files over native ES modules and supports rich features like Hot Module Replacement (HMR).
• A build command that bundles your code for production using Rollup – pre-configured to output highly optimised assets with features like tree-shaking, lazy-loading and common chunk splitting for better caching.

Vite comes with sensible defaults but is highly customisable. You can also extend its features through plugins.

Browser supporrt

During development, Vite sets esnext as the transform target and assumes modern browsers that support features included in Baseline Newly Available.

For production builds, Vite by default targets Baseline Widely Available browsers. These are typically browsers that were released at least 2.5 years ago. The target can be lowered with configuration.

Features

• Instant dev server start. Files are loaded on demand over native ESM so there’s little to nothing to do on server start.
• Lightning fast HMR.
• Optimized builds. Tree-shaking, minification and other features – all via Rolldown.
• Flexible plugin system. Vite plugins extend Rollup’s plugin interface with some extra Vite-specific features.